Without the World
by Deathly Noted
Summary: Born, orphaned, weaponed: as if they were made to leave and be left behind, to kill and be killed. This is their last stand. The world never gave them a chance, but maybe... MelloxMatt.


Inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale.

Deep in thought, Mello had forgotten to exhale the smoke from his cigarette. His insides itched awkwardly, a coughing fit threatening, but he stubbornly took another drag, tipped his head back, and snarled a misshapen, vaporous demon into the sky, easily defeated by even the blinking streetlight and waning moonlight.

Mello hated Tokyo, just like he hated Los Angeles and New York and Winchester and every other city on this earth he hadn't called home. It was cold, and even though he was alone, Kira was close, writing names in one of these quaint houses or apartment complexes, and Near was closer than ever to solving the case…

Someone grabbed the pack of cigarettes he had been tapping impatiently against his thigh, and his gun was out of his pants in an instant, pinning the bastard between the eyes… or at least that was what he attempted to do. The lens of Matt's goggles deflected the attack.

"You're late," Mello said by way of greeting, lowering his weapon.

"I had a lot of trouble getting clearance for my car to be shipped overseas, but it would've been even more trouble to buy and customize a new one. Life is a bitch, and then you die." The globe of fire in Matt's lighter magnified the redness of his hair for an instant, and then it darkened again to a clotted crimson. "Thanks for the cigarettes… except you smoked, like, the whole pack."

"Hmm," Mello acknowledged Matt's words through a last drag on his cigarette, then he cast the stub to the ground and let Matt put it out. They started walking, almost synchronized, but Mello's boots were giving the orders about where they were going.

Except for the sound of footsteps and Matt indulging in one cigarette after another, the most populous city in the world seemed strangely silent, especially since Mello's mind was still screaming at him from the inside, screaming in that hollow loud soundless way that was completely unbearable.

Honestly, Mello was walking in a completely random direction, scrambling for a plan. He came to Japan knowing he was probably approaching a dead end, but he'd always had an almost foolish sense of determination, one that said he could smash through any wall he was faced with.

Matt flicked the tip of his cigarette, drawing Mello's eye. A rain of gray matter disintegrated into black night.

If Matt knew that Mello was dragging him into that deathly darkness, would he still follow him?

_Yes_ resounded in his head. Mello had never questioned Matt's loyalty, only his own humanity, because he was going through with this, Matt be damned.

He had a plan.

A perfectly insane plan.

The abrupt 180 Mello made could have caused a collision, should have caused a collision. They avoided it like a choreographed dance and fell into step again, because they were geniuses or they knew each other to an unhealthy extent or because they were hypnotized by the belief that they were _lucky_.

They weren't dying young — or at least, not until they accomplished something.

"Home sweet home." There was no lack of sarcasm in Matt's voice as he kicked the door closed behind him, balancing an overabundance of bags and boxes in his arms while Mello of course carried nothing but a chocolate bar. A decaying department store on the outskirts of Tokyo would apparently be acting as their headquarters, complete with an elevator, two escalators, black-and-white checkered flooring, chandeliers, cracked glass display cases, overturned mannequins, and other dusty oddities. The smatterings of black furniture, computers, and chocolate wrappers must have been Mello's decorative additions.

"Could you have found somewhere better on such short notice?" Mello baited, though his eyes slanted in a dangerous way that warned Matt not to say anything. "You can put those on the kitchen table."

_Kitchen table?_ Smoky eyes sped read the room again and came to the conclusion that Mello meant the display case with a few more chocolate bars on it than the others. Matt's muscles rejoiced as he set down what must have been his body weight in luggage, illegal purchases, and take-out, and he took a long, languid moment to yawn and stretch his arms above his head.

Mello was watching him. What did he want? Probably chocolate…

Rummaging around, ripping through cardboard and packaging tape and plastic, Matt eventually plopped down on the floor across from the leather armchair Mello had taken up like it was some sort of throne, passing off a chocolate gâteau and plastic fork without any pleasantries like _thank you_ or _you're welcome_, without smiling or meeting eyes.

"Welcome back, Matt." The mechanized voice, spoken in half-tones and jilted syllables, sounded out from Matt's laptop as it booted up. "How was your day?"

"It was _boring_." Matt's mannerless mouth contained equal parts snide remarks and Japanese food. "I hope something exciting happens soon."

Mello took the hint, licking the last of the frosting from his fork and casting the empty cake container aside, his smirk sadistic and so self-satisfied that Matt's lip almost twitched upward in return. Only Mello could make Matt _feel_, alive and worthwhile, that heady mix of_ oh shit_ and _bullshit_ and _this is so worth it_. "We bought those smokescreens for a reason. Here's the plan…"

So much for the plan.

He only managed to shoot five out of Takada's twelve guards — and they shot him right back. Blood dripped from his shoulder to the car's leather interior with an ominous sound, the clock counting down, as his vision flinched and twisted. The enemy headlights continued to trail him, a pride of yellow cat-eyes. He couldn't give in. He couldn't.

"Takada, you little fucking _bitch!_" Mello extracted the bullet from his bare shoulder with a particularly loud curse. "I hope Matt slit your throat and left your corpse for the dogs. God damn it, God damn it, God damn… Matt…"

Something disturbing occurred to Mello, in that moment. If their roles had been reversed, Matt probably would have been dead by then, and Mello had at first considered giving the job of distracting Takada's guards to Matt. In the end, it made more sense for Mello to subdue them, with his shooting experience. (Matt's video games definitely didn't count, despite Matt's pouty counterarguments and complaints that Mello hogged all the interesting jobs.)

Mello gripped onto the steering wheel, his shoulder, and his consciousness, because somewhere in this world, someone was waiting for him.

Matt flicked his lighter on and off, on and off, on and off, the hisses of sound echoing Takada's sobs. The bitch had been hysterical ever since he strip-searched her, bound her hands and feet, and inspected all of her bodily cavities. Well, boo-fucking-hoo. Cute girl or not, Matt was feeling less than sympathetic with confiscated murder weapons in his vest pocket and Mello late to rendezvous.

Something banged or broke on the lower floor of the department store, and Matt pocketed his lighter in favor of his gun as he stood up. It could be Mello; it could be a cat or petty criminal looking for scraps; or worst case scenario, he had been followed or somehow tracked, and Matt was as good as dead.

"Lady Takada has yet to be… I believe…" The newscast, already muffled by Takada's crying, was muted entirely when Matt used the sole of his boot to shut his laptop. Still, he couldn't discern the source of the sound below. He kicked a mannequin's severed head in Takada's direction, a silent threat for her to shut up, but the gesture backfired and made her cry harder.

Perhaps less cautious than he should have been in such a situation, he stomped to the railing overlooking the bottom floor of the department store and leaned over, gun pointed and prepared to take out Takada's guards like the brain-dead zombies they were—

There was already blood, everywhere: spatters of stark red on the checkerboard. His eyes scanned the splotches and streaks randomly but came up with nothing else of note, and he wondered idly if his death had been written down or if this was simply one too many hours to go without sleep.

Pistol in hand, unhesitating, Matt descended one of the defunct escalators and took up the trail of blood-breadcrumbs, circling and winding his way through some deranged maze with God-knows-what as the goal.

A small sound — perhaps the scratching of fingernails or a shoe squeaking — alerted Matt of a presence to his left. His gun locked onto it in an instant, his trigger-finger flexed, and then—

His senses screamed at him, heart beating in his ears _no, no, __**no.**_

Unbreathing, unspeaking, only bleeding, Mello was curled up in the corner created by an overturned clothes rack and the counter beside it, as an animal seeks out its deathbed.

"No," Matt gasped, so panicked and tangible upon his leaden tongue, "No, no, no, no, no. Mello, Mello, _no._"

Mello felt less extant when Matt held him in his arms, limp as he was. His head lolled to the side and came to rest on Matt's chest, and Matt checked his neck for a pulse, behind his ears, even upon his lips with his fumbling gloved fingertips.

Nothing.

The universe was crumbling to nothingness, atom by atom, breath by distressed breath.

"Oh, fuck…" Matt mumbled, and though his head drooped with depression and _defeat_, his hands acted of their own accord, stripping off everything but his boxers and wrapping bullet wound after bullet wound only to uncover another. When Halle Lidner didn't pick up her phone after the first ring or two, he redialed for another SPK member… Rester, perhaps that was his name.

"Yes? Who is this?" the man answered professionally, though skeptically.

"Near—Near—" How his stuttering got any sort of point across was beyond Matt, but Near's voice crept over the line a moment later, placid and plastic as one of his toys:

"Hello."

"I'll give you Takada—I'll give you—I'll give you the _world_—so please, please, you have to save Mello."

Colors and numbers, facts and fiction, flickering through his mind like strobe lights. Slower and darker than oozing tar, faster and brighter than wildfire; this is the low drone of hummingbird wings, stuck in the spider webs of space and time if not backward-bound, over and over and over frozen moments.

Mello opened his eyes.

His surroundings were nondescript, an almost indiscernible blur of shapes and shadows and shades of gray, due to dim lighting or perhaps solely his own sense of disorientation. When he sat up, he triggered his gag reflex, and when he stood, he nearly collapsed. Nevertheless, he kept walking, past the businessman asleep in an armchair beside the bed and into a long, equally obscure hall.

He had to contact Matt.

Squinting, Mello reached for his cell phone as well as his gun, only to realize he was wearing a plain black T-shirt and pants. Well, fuck. He should have expected that, though considering how slow and numb he felt, he was probably drugged, too. Maybe this was all just a hallucination, another dream, but that light at the end of the tunnel was too tempting not to pursue.

A few feet from the light, hands grabbed at him — the businessman. Mello could make sense neither of his murmuring nor his purpose, so he attacked, fast as his lagging mind and body allowed and with the viciousness of killing intent, but… the man avoided every blow, like he knew beforehand… like a dance…

"…Matt?" he asked, hesitating, hovering between attempting another attack and being forced to give in to the inevitable collapse. This was one of those rare instances, in which Mello doubted his instincts, because this was just… it was a _mindfuck_.

"You remember me… thank god, you remember me… it's me, it's Matt…"

"You…" Mello leaned against the wall, waiting for the words to come to his tongue. "You look… like shit."

"So do you." Smiling slightly, perhaps sadly, Matt shook his head, though no smoke rose up from the action, and no goggle-glass glinted, and no shards of red carelessly swept his forehead; his hair was slicked back, and his lips and eyes were adorned only with creases and smudgy gray-purple circles. "But I think I see what you're getting at."

It was a question mark, the way Mello cocked his head just so, the vague sound that came out of his throat. Matt understood, and continued: "It's been… eight years, Mello. You were in a coma. This is the New World now, and if you don't blend in, you'll be targeted and killed, so… so don't panic, and don't be rash. Don't go outside until I tell you so—"

Mello closed his eyes, counted to ten, and tried to regain some semblance of self — the smallest sand grain of control — but hunching his shoulders, shuddering, he threw up, sick with the sense that he and Matt were expired.

That they should have just _died_, alongside everything else that mattered in life.

When Matt woke up the next morning, Mello was gone: no note, no imprint of his body in the bedsheets, no evidence whatsoever of his existence, just like the first time Mello left him behind.

He knew something was amiss when Mello threw up, hit him, fucked him, but he only _wanted_ to know what was good: to touch Mello, to hold him, to know that he was awake and alive and the same. He only wanted Mello to stay with him, but no, the bastard hadn't changed: selfish, sadistic, seductive _Mello_.

Shivering, Matt stepped out onto the apartment's balcony. His unbuttoned jeans did little to ward off mid-winter, wind lashing at his exposed skin and snow crinkling unpleasantly between his bare toes, though his lack of public decency was actually more of a risk to his safety than the weather. He was already on the authorities' shitlist for missing too many days of work.

Maybe he was asking for it.

Matt lit up a cancer stick, free forearm slumping onto the ice-sheeted railing, at first feeling only the illusion of heat from the feeble flame at the tip of his cigarette and the subsequent smoke he inhaled, then a real burning in his throat, like being choked.

Fingers entwined with Matt's for a moment, agilely extracting the cigarette from his grip, and he turned, his stuttering, surprised breaths forming tangible clouds of cold and of smoke, to find Mello behind him, all black leather and blood-red rosary beads.

"You're crying," Mello pointed out, almost paranoid.

"…I thought you left," Matt stated oddly and after a time, observing the perfect way Mello took the butt of Matt's drug upon his lips and breathed through it, coexisted with it, more intimate with that inanimate object than any human being.

"I did," Mello affirmed, his dark and utterly guiltless eyes trapping Matt and forcing something upon him, some emotion he wasn't aware existed until now.

The wind continued its cold caress, freezing Matt's tears in place more than drying them up.

"Why did you come back? Why do you always come back? The world without you… it would be so simple." The way his voice twisted on his tongue, cracked and spewed shattered glass, it sounded like a threat; but Mello didn't react. He stared at Matt, inhaling and exhaling steadily, and waited. _Waited._ "The world without you… it would be so… so unbearably boring… so _lonely._ I don't care if it's Wammy's House or the New World or Hell, Mello; I want… I want this…"

The last fragment of firelight between them wisped out of existence, victim to the wind or just time. Mello discarded their shared cigarette, decrepit dusk upon snow so white, and pulled a gun out of his coat.

"Matt… forgive me…"

"Forgiven," Matt responded instantly.

"No, _listen._" And Mello actually looked away, something like humble, except that he was inspecting the gun in his hands. "I wanted to kill you."

Matt tapped another cigarette out of his pack, enkindled it, and took a drag, and the sound he made around the smoke, it was almost one of pleasure, of amusement or contentment, "Hmm…"

Their eyes met without the barrier of goggles or sunglasses between them, both a black beyond black, deadly darkness melding with its exact mysterious match: Mello and Matt.

"But when I tried to, I realized something," Mello said, tucking the gun into the laces of his leather pants and sidling up to Matt, so close yet somehow separate: "A world without you… that would be the worst one, even for an instant… and I'd rather live with you than die with you. I come back, Matt, because I'd rather be with you than without you; but the world doesn't want that. No matter what, the world won't want us, so let's burn it to the fucking ground. Let's burn it up, until it's only us."

"Sounds fun."

**A/N:** And thus ends our odd adventure. Mello and Matt, what did I do to you? XD; Originally, I wrote it out as Mello shooting Matt and Matt dying, gasp. I feel bad putting the characters through additional crap after they suffered so much canonically, though, so here's a happy (?) ending.

Please take the time to review, even a word or two, if you liked this...


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